Politicians often do some stupid things in a panic or trying to make one size fit all. We’ve seen that in the US and I suspect the same in this instance. After having traffic back and forth to St. Thomas, certainly some well publicized involving drugs and weapons, and bringing Covid along, they decided to clamp down on security and expended resources to do it.

So they “caught” two old couples on a tack in a sailboat with no contraband and no intention of going ashore and in their one size fits all mindset, forced them ashore and have essentially held them hostage for many days.

They may as some claim be perfectly within their rights in doing so and their claim overrides innocent passage, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t dumb as a box of hammers.

The bvi has often hit people hard in the pocketbook for fishing in their waters without permits but the public view of this insistence on 20,000 $ in cash, appears to be a shakedown. It has all the markings of a small town catching someone for minor traffic violations and locking em up until they paid thousands in ransom, er fines.

But in a country beset with a terrible economy, with banking suffering before tourism tanked and obviously not great political leadership as evidenced by the disasterous December 1 reopening and letting this fiasco get out of hand, those leaders seem to be doubling down on dumb.

The quicker they clear this up for “humanitarian concerns” , the less damage to their brand. Never go broke betting on a bureaucrat to do something stupid and compounding it. It will be forgotten but will hurt on the margin and didn’t have to happen.